She skipped along the path as only a child could. Carefree, naïve, laughing as she tripped past a daisy.
She was like most children in her excitement but something betrayed her, something that kept most away. It was visible only in the form of the red cloak she was swathed in. It was cunningly cut so it wouldn't brush against the ground and the hood was tucked over her brown curls.
Granny had made it for her and made the girl promise she would always wear it when running about. Like good girls ought to, she had promised and donned it always, flaunting it in the faces of the other children more so than the basket she carried under her cloak-draped arm.
It was overflowing with goodies—cookies, a loaf of bread still warm, sticky buns that coated her fingers in their goo and at least four pies. Her lips were dark red stained like the partially finished raspberry pie.
In her other hand, a bouquet of flowers. They were beautiful and gently laid against each other obviously as she was loath to hold them too tightly and squish them so. These had been picked with the care of a child who had run after one blossom after another with high hopes of presenting a pretty present. Daisies, tulips, lilies and irises, a rose and daffodils…
The rose slides a bit and drops as she hops over a tree stump in her way. It lay forgotten by a little girl.
...
She walked, keeping her dress off the thin branches reaching out. She glanced over her shoulder but her feet stayed ahead of her on the path she took and she held on to her basket handle, taking care that it shouldn't swing.
She was not a child anymore. Nor was she a married woman with babes and a man in her bed. She was as someone once called her in flattery, a young lady. Her hair was not worn in pigtails or with a hair ribbon and her dresses weren't short enough to see her stockings. Instead, it was braided and she wore a bodice over her blouse.
Finally, her walk slowed and her basket gently sat on the ground as she kneeled before a cross.
"Father," she murmured. "Mother, Granny."
The dead did not answer her.
She reached into her basket and pulled out a candle, which she lit and left burning in her hands, alighting her face.
She rummaged through her basket once more and removed a knife. It was shiny and small, the edges sharp as she dropped it at the foot of the grave. Then she added a small loaf of bread, freshly-baked.
They were for her father and mother, one shot in the Woods, the other trampled by a Giant's foot inside her house. And for her grandmother, an old ribbon, red like blood or roses.
And she settled the candle in a small hollow in the ground before laying a last offering, a rose.
Her mother had been dead for almost ten years now, and she still she was worn as in mourning. Her dress was grey and dusty, her hair hidden from vanity under a scarf and her face ashen.
To her father, he assumed this was an appearance of mourning. To her step-mother, this was the apparel of an ash-girl and she added on to her name. The bright girl called Ella burned in her stepmother's orders and withered into the ashes, the maid Cinderella.
The irony was of course, that her mother had burned to death.
Ella had grown up in a fine house, the daughter of a wealthy merchant but now Cinderella went running out as soon as the kitchen fire died, towards a tree where a linnet bird and green finch sang.
"Mother," Cinderella begged and prayed at the roots of the tree. "I've done what you always told me to do as a child, to be good and kind and nice but still I have nothing. What is it I've done wrong?"
"You were not born her daughter," Her mother's spirit would whisper out. "She would never love anyone else's child they way you love your own."
"What of Father? Shouldn't he love me enough?"
"You are no longer a child, he cannot show affection for you anymore." Was the only answer.
And Cinderella would cry out in despair each time. "Oh, Mother! Whatever am I to do?"
"Tell me what you want to do and I'll see that you have your opportunity."
...
"Darling, it shall be grand." Her Prince declared. "I will take a three day visit into the Woods by myself. I'll leave the Steward to handle any matters that may occur. Just a chance to be alone in the Woods and escape the rigors of royalty."
"I'm so happy," the Princess said, smiling beautifully.
That's what princesses did, you know. They were beautiful.
It had been Cinderella's task to make things beautiful. Do Florinda's hair, fix Lucinda's dress, sweep the floors, clean the fine china…now, everything was made beautiful for her. The marble floors were polished, her gowns were gold silk and her hair was carefully coifed to suit her royal crown.
Her stepmother fluttered her eyebrows of things and nodded. "Oh, yes indeed, we're so happy for you, your Highness!"
"So happy!" Her stepsisters twittered.
Her Prince stopped patting her hand and smiling. He looked towards her, but not at her. He never looked directly at her, like her beauty would stun if stared at.
"I'm so pleased," He said, offering her a kiss on the hand. "Married for half a year already and we've never argued. Not one row!"
She could have said something nasty, guilty and ugly, something to stain this conversation, their marriage worse than pitch upon marble floors. She could have said that they never argued because he never asked her opinion. They couldn't fight because her stepmother was always there, sharp fingernails restraining her from getting out of her throne.
So, she was beautiful.
"Bread, pies, cakes, cookies, the sticky buns…we are low on flour!" She called out, hands flying to her hips as she turned towards him.
"I'll order some more than,' He said quietly.
"Better do it quickly, I guess it won't last the week," She said.
And he continued rolling the dough and she finished up the inventory. It was a hard job, you know. There was the ingredients that had to be labeled, the money added up, the supply couldn't get stale.
He had already put the bread loaf in the oven and started making gingerbread by the time she finished.
"It looks like—gingerbread? Why, it's nowhere near the time to be using it. It's spring again now." She protested, gesturing towards the window.
"How does the inventory look?" he asked evenly as he continued to mix.
"Well," she said, checking her figures. "A little low on berries but that will come in the summer but considering the gold pieces we got for the Butcher's marriage bread, I think we could very well afford—"
His face lightened and he grabbed a tin cutter, triumphantly rolling away the edges of the dough and held it out to her.
She saw the brown skin of a small child, it's face smiling before her hand smacked the tray away.
"No, no, no." She sobbed. "Can't you understand?"
But of course he wouldn't. Because she was supposed to help bake the bread and feed their family, not watch them starve on dreams.
...
"So perfect," she murmured. Her fingers traced a cheek gentler than petals, softer than mist. "Just like she said."
Her husband stiffened and straightened, peeking out the window and closing the curtain, darkening the day.
"It's all right, he's asleep, the light won't bother him." She assured him but he grimly shook his head.
"The Witch, the Witch from next door!" He moaned, his hands in his hair. "Remember, she took my sister from the cradle. What if she…?"
The words are too awful to say aloud but the truth rings clear. A perfect child. A baby for rampion. A spell on a childless couple.
"She won't," his wife declares strongly, shifting the babe from one arm to the other so he won't be disturbed by her rapidly thumping heart.
The days pass from their son's birthing day. He is still small and perfect—it is his parents who are not. His father can't hold him well enough to comfort his tears. Instead, her husband hands their son back to her.
"I can't take care of him all the time," She said desperately one day. If she did, when would she have time to be a wife, particularly to fulfill the duties of a Baker's Wife?
The house is too small, the father too timid, the mother too tired, but their son is perfect and as the Witch never emerges from behind her walled garden throughout the summer, that's all that matters to her as she stands over his cradle.
"Where are you going, Mother Gothel?" Her voice was pure and sweet, higher than any bird. The old Witch smiled and stroked the girl's yellow hair.
"Back to my garden, Rapunzel. I need to keep an eye on other things. You'll be safe without me here, so long as you remember what I told you."
"I do!" Her daughter exclaimed, shaking back her two braids. "I'm not to let anyone into the Tower unless they say 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me.'"
The Witch nodded. "I'll be back tomorrow, when the sun is highest."
"But what shall I do without you, Mother?" Rapunzel almost begged, clinging her adoptive mother's dress.
"Sing and comb your hair I suppose," The Witch said vaguely. "You'll find a way to pass the time, now let go of me, Rapunzel. It's only right. Still a child, but certainly big enough to stay here without me."
The girl pouted, but allowed her hair to be draped out the window.
"Will it hurt?" She quavered as her mother readied herself.
"Perhaps a bit," the Witch agreed. "Are you ready?"
"I guess." Rapunzel said unhappily.
Her hair dropped itself to the bottom of the tower, striking the ground. The Witch grasped it and prepared to sidle her way down as Rapunzel moaned and clutched at her hair in agony.
She was so young. But she was the Witch's and she'd be safe here. No man would ever find her and mother and daughter would be happy.
...
She was still so young. When she had been Rapunzel's age—
When she had been Rapunzel's age, she had let herself be fooled into love and instead was raped by a Baker and cursed into her former ugly self and became a mother to his daughter. That same daughter who was now standing there with a Prince who had raped her and two babes swaddled in cloth. Twins.
But that was all right. They could raise the two of them together. And surely, her daughter never wanted to see this man who forced her through such agony of childbirth and abandonment ever again. Perhaps he be a nice bear.
"Come with me, child." The Witch urged. "We could be happy like we once were!"
"She will not go with you," the Prince orders but she strikes back with anger.
"Let her speak for herself!" She snapped and they both turned towards her.
There was a moment, when it was like she'd run towards her but then she shook her head and scooted towards him.
No!
She blinked past tears trying not to see her daughter but her father, the man with yellow hair and flour-coated hands in her garden who ran off—"You leave me no choice!" She shouted, raising her staff.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened, except this time, her love ran off with their two children and spouse to start a new family without her. The Witch was alone and she had no power strong enough to stop it.
The girl was tired of skipping along the path. She wandered over to the side of road and sat down, chewing on a piece of her bread Stepmother gave her.
Her brother joined her, tired of running back and forth.
They shivered, either from fright or cold or maybe both. It was growing dark, too dark to tell between the shadows from the sun or the shade of night.
She broke off half of her bread and handed it to her brother, who ate it gratefully. He had used his to make them a trail earlier, but the path was gone and they were lost, cold and hungry.
The bread gone, they huddled closer for warmth.
Once there had been a time, when their father smiled and their mother sang. Then, their stepmother scowled and their father cried. Now, Stepmother screamed and Father was gone somewhere into the Woods and they were in the Woods somewhere too.
Maybe if they walked, they'd find a cave where bears lived. Or a Witch that wanted to eat them. But maybe if they kept walking, they'd find a house with beds and a fire and people who'd give them gingerbread cookies, she hoped.
Their Stepmother had told them stories like that once, back when she had been nice. About when she was little, her stepmother the wicked queen who was dead, made her go live in the forest or die.
Her brother turned towards her. "What should we do now, Gretel?" Hansel asked.
So, while searching through my notes for ideas, I came across my notes on the Generational Theory: that Red, Cinderella, the Baker's Wife and the Witch are all the same person at different stages of thier life. Red being the child to a teen, Cinderella the teen to a wife, the Baker's Wife obviously a wife to a mother and the Witch a mother to an old woman alone. And to complete it, Rapunzel's daughter, Gretel as a child.